Memoirs: Night Out

After enjoying the smooth, husky pitter patter of Loyle Carner’s voice live in the flesh, your night’s taken a more debaucherous detour. Soaked through every orifice by the pissing rain but warmed by company of your good friends, you’ve gone to Yates and bought a few cheap pints to get nice and pissed. Maybe a couple of nice bright blue pitchers as well, the details are always hazy. But it’s nice and cheap. There’s an old noncey bloke who’s there on his own, too pissed to recognise that the 15-year-old girls he’s dancing with are bullying him. They’re pointing and laughing when his back’s turned, but keeping his pickle tickled by touching him all over and, in a circle surrounding him, slut-dropping in sync. It’s a well-oiled routine and he’s being nicely done over.

After getting the most you can out of Yates on a Thursday night, you leave nice and squiffy towards The Artful Dodger, at a club you’ve only been to once before. You remembered it being pretty shit but it was over a year ago. When you eventually shuffle in past the bouncers, your heart drops: it definitely is shit. It’s a tragic scene. A sensory overload of sticky floors, pumping house (not garage) and the smell of Jaeger Bombs sidles over to greet you and ushers you in. Sick Chirpse has organised the night and they’ve stuck Bigger Than Barry on as a support act, which has nicely filled the cunt quota for the night. You decide to get as fucked as your money will allow so that you can at least enjoy the two Artful Dodger songs you actually know.

The girl you kissed last weekend’s over there… You’re not certain you want to see her, but then again you are pretty pissed and you go up to her and sort of try to look friendly. You end up kissing again, and get a few drinks whilst moaning about how you hoped this place wasn’t as shit as you remembered but it actually is and that you’re disappointed about it. Sort of insinuating that you’re too cool to be there, even though you know you’re not and you go on ‘shit’ nights out all the time. She suggests you leave, and you tell her to come to yours. The November air’s cold and makes the 40 minute stumble home unbearable. You decide to put your jacket over her, gritting your teeth and wondering why the fuck she didn’t just bring one herself – what the fuck! After a while, she gives it back to you and says it’s obvious you’d rather wear it than give it to her; you resist for a minute but then boozily snatch your jacket back off her and put it on.

Opening your door, your heart sinks slightly as you hear laughter in the kitchen, as the smell of hash wafts gently down the corridor. Everyone’s really enjoying the fact that you’ve brought someone back; they’re grinning and very obviously trying to catch your eye in their shriveled, reddened gazes… You swiftly take your companion up to your room… You don’t have a condom. The girls asks “are you clean?” in a gently accusatory tone. You are. You have sex. The next morning, she borrows your jumper for the walk home (why the fuck didn’t she bring a jacket) and you exchange a few messages without ever meeting up again.

Two weeks pass. Your knob is sore. It’s a bit red, and very sore. You’re playing 5-A-Side football with your housemates and you can’t stop readjusting your naughty manservant.

A month passes. The symptoms persist. You go to the STD clinic one morning at 8am before your seminar, feeling queasy with nerves and tiredness. The clinic’s a depressing, but at the same time intriguing place. There’s a mix of everyone from all levels of society: Middle-aged businessmen, single mums, students, young teenagers, all united by a common fear. You try to work out what everyone’s doing there then realise it makes you really uncomfortable so you put your head down and wonder what’s wrong with your poor willy and why you didn’t just wear a condom. Fuck you Yates and fuck off Artful Dodger, you big twat.